Thanks to greater voter participation in the second round of regional elections, the withdrawal of Socialist electoral lists in two regions and the hoped-for transfer of leftwing votes to the rightwing, the results of the French regional elections on the weekend were spectacular.

The far-right National Front party, which had a comfortable lead after the first round of voting, failed to win a single region.

Moderate voters are feeling very relieved. It must not be "cowardly relief," however, to borrow Prime Minister Léon Blum famous expression after the Munich Pact.

In other words, an immediate danger has been avoided. But if the mainstream parties do not ask themselves some serious questions regarding the future, a National Front victory has merely been postponed.

If the concerns of the French people are not answered, the National Front will continue to gain ground until the presidential elections in 2017.

Its leaders can be confident. Their alone-against-everyone-else strategy has allowed them to keep rising in the polls from one election to the next.

Are the other parties up to asking themselves the hard questions?

They have good reason to do so: both the Socialists and Les Républicains have been deeply shaken by this election. The left will not have a single representative in two regions that used to be leftwing bastions. Last night they also lost the Paris Region. Nicolas Sarkozy's party is caught in a stranglehold: it cannot triumph because it owes several of its regional victories to transferred leftwing votes.

It is time for all of them to demonstrate humility and begin the task of regaining voter trust.

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